The ministers having been sworn of the Privy Council, Lord Monck announced that Her Majesty had been pleased to confer upon the new prime minister the rank of Knight Commander of the Bath, and upon Cartier, Galt, Tilley, Tupper, Howland, and McDougall the companionship of the same order. No previous intimation had been given to any of them. Cartier and Galt, deeming the recognition of their services inadequate, declined to receive it. This incident is only worthy of mention because it tended to disturb the personal relations of men who should have acted in complete harmony at a time of national importance. No Imperial honours had been conferred in Canada since 1860, and it was unfortunate that the advice tendered the crown on this historic occasion should have been open to criticism and have engendered ill feeling. Cartier thought that his race had been affronted in his person, and his reasons for protest were political. He told his colleagues: 'Personally I care nothing for honours, but as a representative of one of the two great provinces in Confederation I have a position to maintain, and I shall not accept the honour. I regret that such an action is necessary, because it may be construed as an insult to Her Majesty. I feel aggrieved that I should not have been notified in advance, so that I should not now have to refuse, but I shall write to Her Majesty myself explaining the reasons for my refusing the honour.'[[2]] The error was soon rectified and Cartier was made a baronet. A number of persons, including Charles Tupper and Edward Watkin, a member of the Imperial parliament, interested themselves in the matter, pointing out to the London authorities the unwisdom of bestowing titles without due regard to the Imperial services of the recipients. The reputations of Galt and Cartier as serious statesmen were not enhanced. Explain it as we may, there is a flavour of absurdity about their proceedings. Galt was offered a knighthood in 1869, and would not accept until the Imperial government had been made aware of his views upon the ultimate destiny of Canada. In a letter to the governor-general he thus placed himself on record:
I regard the confederation of the British North American Provinces as a measure which must ultimately lead to their separation from Great Britain. The present connection is undoubtedly an embarrassment to Great Britain in her relations to the United States and a source of uneasiness to the Dominion, owing to the insecurity which is felt to exist from the possibility of a rupture between the two nations. It cannot be the policy of England, and is certainly not the desire of the people here, to become annexed to the United States; but I believe the best, and indeed the only way to prevent this, is to teach the Canadian people to look forward to an independent existence as a nation in the future as desirable and possible. Unless such a spirit be cultivated, the idea will become engrained in the public mind, that failing the connection with Great Britain annexation must ensue.
Galt went on to state that he hoped separation would be postponed as long as possible. The reply of the secretary of state, Lord Granville, was private, but it appears to have been in effect a declaration that Galt could hold any views he pleased about the future of the Empire. He accepted the K.C.M.G. and worthily wore it to the end of an honourable and public-spirited career. Thus was vindicated the freedom of speech which is the birthright of every British subject. But Galt, in exercising it, showed lack of stability and a tendency to take an erratic course, which crippled his influence in the young state he had done so much to found.
It was an enormous burden of duty which now fell upon the executive. The whole machinery of state required recasting. The uncertainties of a situation wherein party bonds sat lightly and diversities of opinion lingered, taxed all the resources of the leader of the government. Although different views are held as to the particular stage in his long career in which the remarkable qualities of Sir John Macdonald displayed themselves most conspicuously, the first five years of the union may well be regarded by future historians as the period when his patience, tenacity, and adroitness were especially in evidence.
The provincial governments had to be constituted; and in Ontario Macdonald scored again by persuading Sandfield Macdonald to form a coalition ministry in which party lines were effaced and the policy of coalition was defended by an erstwhile Liberal leader. Sandfield Macdonald was a man of talent and integrity. His attitude of mind was rather that of an oppositionist, upon whom the functions of independent critic sat more easily than the compromises and discipline entailed by party leadership. He bore restraint with impatience, and if his affiliations had always been with the Liberals, it was not because his sympathies were radical and progressive.[[3]] In the Liberal caucus of 1864 he had moved the resolution requesting George Brown to enter the coalition government, without recognizing, apparently, that he thereby incurred an obligation himself to support federation. Both in the Ontario legislature, where he was loth to follow any course but his own, and in the Dominion parliament, where he ostentatiously sat on an Opposition bench, he presented a shining example of that type of mind which lacks the capacity for unity and co-operation with others. He illustrated, too, one of the difficult features of Macdonald's problem—the absence of unity among the public men of the time—a condition which complicated, if it did not retard, the formation of a homogeneous national sentiment.[[4]]
The general elections were impending, and everything turned upon the verdict of the country. The first elections for the House of Commons took place during the months of August and September, the practice of holding elections all on one day having not yet come into vogue. The three provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick sustained the government by large majorities. But in Nova Scotia the agitation against the union swept the province. Tupper was the only Conservative elected. His victory was the more notable in that he defeated William Annand, the chief lieutenant of Howe and afterwards the leader of the repeal movement. Adams Archibald, the secretary of state, was defeated in Colchester by A. W. McLelan, and Henry, another member of the Quebec Conference, was rejected in Antigonish. In Ontario there were losses. George Brown was defeated in South Ontario by a few votes, and did not again sit in parliament until he was appointed to the Senate in 1874. In the early years of the Dominion a member might sit both in the House of Commons and in the legislature of his province. So it was that at this election Edward Blake was returned from South Bruce to the Ontario legislature and from West Durham to the House of Commons. Other members who occupied seats in both bodies were Sandfield Macdonald, John Carling, Alexander Mackenzie, and E. B. Wood. Cartier's success in Quebec left his opponents only fifteen seats out of sixty-five. The stars in their courses fought for the government; and had it not been for Nova Scotia, where the victorious and hostile forces were pledged to repeal, the consolidation of the Dominion could have gone forward without hindrance.
To deal with 'that pestilent fellow Howe,' to use Macdonald's phrase, was a first charge upon the energies of the government. The history of the repeal movement in Nova Scotia, with all its incidents and sidelights, has yet to be written. It was but one of the disintegrating forces which Macdonald found so hard to cope with, that in a moment of discouragement he seriously thought of withdrawing from the government and letting others carry it on. A large portion of the year 1868 was occupied with the effort to reconcile the Nova Scotians. Instead of abating, the anti-confederate feeling in that province grew more bitter. A delegation headed by Howe and Annand went to England to demand repeal from the Imperial authorities. To counteract this move the Dominion government sent Charles Tupper to present the other side of the case. None of the passages in his political life reflect more credit upon him than his diplomacy upon this occasion. He had already declined, as we have seen, a seat in the Cabinet. Later, he had further strengthened his reputation by refusing the lucrative office of chairman of the commission to build the Intercolonial Railway. This fresh display of independence enabled him to meet the repeal delegates on ground as patriotic as their own, for it had shown that in this crisis they were not the only Nova Scotians who wanted nothing for themselves.
Tupper's first step on reaching London was to call on Howe. 'I said to him,' writes Tupper, 'I will not insult you by suggesting that you should fail to undertake the mission that brought you here. When you find out, however, that the Government and the Imperial Parliament are overwhelmingly against you, it is important for you to consider the next step.'[[5]] This was to put the finger upon the weakest spot in Howe's armour. After his mission had failed and the Imperial authorities had refused to allow the union to be broken up, as they most assuredly would, what could Howe and his friends do next? A revolution was unthinkable. A province 'on strike' would have no adequate means of raising a revenue, and a government lacking the power of taxation soon ceases to exist. The extremists talked Annexation; but in this they counted without Howe and the loyal province of Nova Scotia. The movement, noisy and formidable as it appeared, was foredoomed to failure. All this Tupper put to Joseph Howe; and when Tupper proposed that Howe should enter the Dominion Cabinet, not as his docile follower but as his leader, it can readily be believed that he was 'completely staggered.'